The meaning of “animated” is…

What is a sign? What is an animated sign? What is an “indoors” sign? And what is an “outdoors” sign? When I look at the kinds of signs the planning commission will be deciding on this coming Monday, I have to wonder if they’re going to have to figure out what the meaning of “is” is.

Walgreens clearly does not get the spirit of sustainable development… the kind that leaves a community with its identity intact, not to mention its dignity. No, it’s going to be arguing that an 8-second delay (as opposed to, say, a 4-second delay) makes the sign not animated. And there might well be questions about the sign they want to loom over us from well above the first floor. Oops… but Walgreens didn’t build a second floor, even though the location of that sign (is it indoors or outside???) is at a second floor level. So if you don’t actually have a second floor, does that mean the sign isn’t really up that high?

Mama mia! It’s enough to make you have to hire an attorney! And we all know how happy we are when we have to take our volunteer hours and try to figure out these details that some folks are paid to work into these designs. Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy about Walgreens, eh?

Okay, so let’s go back to some idea of what this is really going to look like. Following are pictures. Just watch the first one for a minute. You’ll see a non-animated sign doing something every eight seconds. If that’s not animated (I made it, folks, with something that any 5th grader knows is an “animated gif”) then I don’t know what it is. Is.